Half Past Midnight
by plumbumbullet
Summary: Hard Landing, behind the scenes. Very adult content.


1

'Nikita, are you there?'

The only thing on my mind for these past six months. The one live rod in my head crackling with electric desperation and keeping me functioning. Barely though.

Oh, the uncertainty!..

Do I dare hope? I've had too many day-dreams lately to believe my eyes. I've seen her everywhere - in every blond-head in Section, under every fedora and wacky sunglasses on the streets. Never quite ready for the rude awakening.

It's not her. She is dead. You killed her.

Just like you killed Simone...

I forget to shower after the mission, putting on my standard black clothes and my 'ruthless Michael' mask. Buttoning and zipping it as tight as I can. I don't know why I bother... Operations and Madeline have surely seen my performance slip. They could have had me canceled already, for some of the stunts I pulled on them. But they haven't. Just as I haven't shot myself in the mouth yet...

Will this be the last straw?

I hurry to my office trying to keep my limbs from trembling, trying to walk in a straight line. I feed Operations the usual lies, almost on auto-pilot. I know he'll be watching me, but I just don't care any more.

Can she be alive?

As soon as I walk in, I secure the room and open the app.

'Nikita, are you there?'

The question - the plea - is hanging there, tantalizing and brutal. The silence reaches for my throat blocking out the air. The heart beats loud and heavy in the empty, echoey well of my chest.

Will there be an answer this time?

'Yes'.

My knees suddenly bend and I fall into the chair. There are tears in my eyes blurring the reality into a haze, making this look like another delusion. I try to blink them away and raise my trembling fingers to type a response.

Instead I get another message. The coordinates.

2

It wasn't a conscious decision to go to Lyon. I knew that I was putting everything at risk - my long-awaited freedom, my status quo, my life.

I tried living it. Oh God, I tried!.. But I was fooling myself. You cannot erase Section. You cannot unlearn all the hard truths, you cannot stop looking over your shoulder, you cannot sleep the sleep of the blessed ignorance. Once they've taught you to be a weapon, you cannot just walk by any more. You cannot forget.

The world wasn't the same as four years ago. I would go to a park to enjoy the weather and be suspicious of every black van, every harmless looking person. I would think of getting a pet and then remember that I couldn't stay at one place for more than a month. I would smile to someone approaching me with an innocent attempt at a conversation and then cut it short. No one could know who I was. What I was...

Madeline's words kept ringing in my head. 'The world outside these walls is an illusion. It's not really there for us. We're ghosts'. Oh, how I wanted to throw this in her face when I first heard it!.. And how it broke my heart when I finally realized she had been right.

I tried shutting the door to the past. I turned off the pda Michael gave me on the suicide mission, I tried to forget everything that had happened to me since I first came into Section. But even when I managed to block my memories - for brief moments, really, while reading a book or carving at a piece of wood - it flooded back with ravenous force every time I needed to get back to the 'reality'. The truth was there could be no future for me any more. I could not hide who I was for very long. I could not make a career or go to school or start a family. I had to be on the run. I had to be invisible. I had to be a ghost.

And the moment I learned that Freedom League planned to ambush Section, something in me clicked. I didn't stop to ask myself any questions. I simply needed to complete this mission. To save Michael.

That one name opened a pandora box of memories in my head, but I didn't let myself dwell on them for more than a few seconds. The moment I finally saw him - among burning cars, flying bullets and dead bodies - it all came back. His feline grace, his riveting eyes, his callous and - oh so tender - hands, his tentatively searching mouth that only kissed me on missions...

I got out of there as soon as he broke the gaze, knees buckling under me, heart pounding heavy and low. When I got back to the boat, I dug the pda out of my bag and finally turned it on. There were two hundred and fifty six messages, all of them the same: 'Nikita, are you there?' I gulped and typed my coordinates, before the doubts could get the better of me.

3

It's a chilly night, but my blood is boiling. I am almost enraged that she has kept silent for all these months. If she had only let me know that she was alive...

A cool wind sweeps through my hair soothing the perspiration at the temples. There is a slight lulling sound of water lapping at the stone river banks. She should be in one of these abandoned creaking boats... Just a couple more steps.

I look around to make sure that no one else is lurking in the shadows and then come closer to the porthole to glance inside. It is dark, with only an old yellow streetlight peeping from behind me, but I can see her white silhouette sitting on the floor with her back to a metal post. She has tilted her head and is clutching something in her hand. Probably a gun.

My heart clenches at the sight of her. I go over to the door and turn the handle. She immediately jumps at the sound and aims her gun at me. Her hands are trembling.

How dares she?

I check the cabin and slowly approach her. She is so devastatingly beautiful I simply can't take my eyes off her. Her breasts are slightly rising and falling, barely hiding under the thin clinging top; rising and falling in time with her loud uneven breathing...

I knock the gun out of her hands and throw her on the bed, pinning her with the weight of my body, holding her wrists. Her warmth and smell are too sudden, too unexpected, and I can't help but react to it. I reach down to capture her mouth in mine, feeling the growing pressure below my waist, afraid that I won't be able to stop even if she asks me to... Kissing her is like diving in deep water, head over heels, with your eyes closed, letting the current take you in for as long as you can breathe. When I finally emerge on the surface, my head is swimming with the sensations, and I let go of her hands.

'I though I lost you...'

It comes out of me in a single long gasp before I can think of anything. I look at her stunned at my own revelation.

Her hands are free so she can easily overthrow me now. Instead she reaches for my lapels, brings me even closer to her and whispers:

'You never had me.'

It is a challenge that I do not hesitate to accept. We kiss almost violently, battling with our arms and hands to undress each other. It is another kind of dive, and I discover that beneath the water there is devouring, scalding fire. She is squirming under me, pressing her belly to my aroused flesh, trying to take my coat off and I am barely keeping it together...

Oh God, it's been so long. So long since I've enjoyed being physical with a woman... Still it's not just that, it's the force of her that is breaking down all of my walls. The force that I want to tame and succumb to all at the same time.

I raise Nikita up so that she's sitting on the makeshift bed and I am kneeling in front of her. I keep kissing her, my tongue hungry and insistent, my left hand roaming in her hair, releasing the natural fragrance, my right hand slowly going up her back, under the thin top. She is responding amply, ferociously and tugging at my coat.

I put down my arms and let her slide the coat off me. This temporary disconnection returns some of the sense back to me and I look at her trying to see if there is any doubt. She holds my gaze rather boldly and then encircles me with her long legs pressing my body tight against herself. Her fingers are pulling the shirt out of my pants and drawing circles on the skin of my back. I capture her lips with mine again, diving deep into the unknown. I am a boy of sixteen jumping off a cliff into a waterfall pool screaming at the top of my lungs, every cell of my body prickling with fear and delight… For all the women I've slept with on missions, for all the girls I'd had before Section, not one of them has made me feel anything remotely close to this.

Nikita has pulled the shirt up to my armpits and I let go of her again to help her take it off. She looks at my chest adoringly and licks her lips. But as much as I enjoy her gaze I am unable to wait any longer. I lean into her and we fall on the bed, mouths locked together, hands roaming all over. She gently rocks under me, pressing my confined flesh to her belly, nursing it to the point where I can't take it any more.

I pull back a little, take both of her hands in mine and pin them above her head. She utters a soft 'Yes', closes her eyes and arches her neck. Her total submission starts a fire below my abdomen and I doubt if I can hold it in for much longer. I start kissing her ear, biting the lobe and then trailing hot lines with my tongue down her silken neck. She moans and whispers my name, and I feel the fire spreading to my chest and gripping at the heart.

I cup her breasts through the thin top and find her hardened nipples with my thumbs. My tongue is already making its way to the same sensitive spots. She arches her back and I slide the top up revealing the two beautiful swells.

I freeze for a moment… It's as if my mind is trying to polaroid this into my memory layer by layer, slowly, profoundly – for me to retrieve it later when she is no longer mine… Certainly we can't have it, we can't be… not for long… only for a short while… before I return to Elena… before Nikita knows… and I wouldn't be as greedy, no… to keep her from having a better life… this one time should be enough…

'Michael…' – she softly brushes my cheek bringing me back to earth.

I look at her and – oh, what a surprise – want to run away. Just like I ran after our first kiss in her apartment, just like I pulled back after they had put us in cages and I had told her… My heart sinks in my chest like an iron cannonball, almost non-beating. I can't feel my hands – there on the bed beside her. I'm scared the way I never have been before. Because this – being here with her, being this close – tugs at the part of my soul I thought I had buried for good…

Nikita's hand is trembling as she takes it away from my face and then covers her naked chest with her crisscrossed arms. She shoots a tormented, accusatory glance at me before she closes her eyes. I can feel her body tighten under me, can feel her holding her breath while she's waiting for me to get up, get dressed and…

No! I can't hurt her this much.

I cradle her with my arms and start kissing around her face – slowly, barely touching, sending electric shivers down my own spine.

'I'm sorry…' – I whisper in her ear when I reach it.

For everything I've done to you. For every time I had to hurt you. For Section. For Elena. For my son who will be two years old in a month. For all the time in the world we cannot have.

I wish I could tell her all that but I don't have the courage. I kiss a wet salty trail coming from her eye to her hair. She starts breathing again – in hot gulps against my neck – and her crisscrossed arms stop being the barrier between us as she encircles me in a gentle trembling embrace.

I caress her cheek urging her to look at me. She finally opens her eyes – that are so vulnerable, so defenseless right now – and waits for my next move.

'There'll be no way back' – I breathe out and hold her gaze.

I hope she can read the desperation, the passion, the devotion – the willingness to pull back if she has even the slightest doubt – better than I can articulate it with words. But she doesn't drop her eyes and without further hesitation brings my mouth to her lips guiding me by my neck.

I kiss her – long and deep – consciously stepping into this stream again. It takes me with it and allows only the foolish fantasy that I can control anything with my movements. But my legs are liquid and my stomach is fire and my chest is expanding like it never had before.

Our heartbeats are racing each other, being so close, behind the cages of our ribs, so longing to become one. Our tongues are plumes of fire lighting the way in the dark. Our bodies entwine and rock and sway moving in perfect unison into the wild waters…

Nikita's breath snags as I let go of her lips and start moving down her neck. Her pulse is beating madly against my lips, short and demanding. I was trained to measure it on valentine missions to determine the further course of action but I'm amazed – and exhilarated – at my own inability to count to as much as three now. I almost laugh but then she puts her fingers in my hair and presses me closer to herself and all my conscious thoughts stream down from my head along with the blood flow.

I kiss down her neck hungrily, gulping for air, and then suck at one of the breasts as if this was my lifeline. She moans and digs her nails in my scalp in pleasure. I flick at her taut nipple with my tongue while gently squeezing the other one with my fingers. I can hear her heart beating right under my face and I listen to its frantic plea mixing with low, uncontrollable sounds coming out of her mouth.

'Yes…' – she whispers as I start to kiss my way down her abdomen and to the waistband of her pants.

Her back is arching to me in total trust.

While I pull the remaining clothes off her long silky legs a thought crosses my mind that if I had met Nikita before Section's training I would not have lasted five minutes in bed with her. My shaft feels like a hot iron billet, heavy and singeing, and, to be honest, I'm afraid to finish in my boxers as I'm doing what I'm about to do with her…

She looks at me and I can see the desire and longing dancing in her eyes like flames at the bottom of the lake. This is so mesmerizing – and this is as much permission as I need to go on.

I spread her legs gently and put my face to her lower belly breathing her in. My head starts swimming almost immediately and I have to grasp the makeshift bed because I suddenly feel like the boat is taking off and the floor is slipping away from me… I take a moment or two slowly kissing around her most sacred part, afraid that touching it would simply burst my heart into pieces. I only realize that I'm waiting for her command when she puts her hands in my hair and directs me to her core.

The first lick along her bud evokes a moan in both of us, and – diving with my eyes closed – I know that I won't have enough of her. Not tonight. Not ever. She becomes my air as my tongue explores her folds and dances around her most tender spot and lunges into her depths and then repeats the whole circle relentlessly. I lose track of time not wanting this to end – ever – but I feel her muscles tightening (oh, too soon) and I want to add to her release.

I slowly put two fingers inside her and press them to her front wall. A small cry escapes her lips and I wish I could be two people at the same time: I wish I could bury my face in her and still be able to look at her, to trace and greedily grasp all her reactions.

My tongue dashes up and down her bud as I press my fingers firmly to the sensitive spot inside and push at it. She buckles against me breathing fast and letting out incoherent noises. I capture her with my teeth and then give her the slightest lick to send her to the edge. She shudders almost brutally and then screams and then ripples around my fingers and under my tongue and embraces my head with her legs. I breathe out – happy to stay this way, at her treasures, for the rest of the night if she wishes me to.

We don't move for a while letting the waves carry our weightless bodies and lap at our naked skin. I forget where we are – and who I am – and simply enjoy the peace I have never felt before. Nikita's lower belly is beating warm against my forehead and I almost fall into a dream: I'm walking with her in a field of corn, hand in hand, and she is smiling at me, and the sun is burning in her hair, almost blinding, and I breathe in the musky smells of earth and grass, and I hear the busy twitter of birds, and – most importantly – I hear her laughter flying freely and carelessly above all this…

Her fingers slightly caress my head and I come to my senses. I give her bud one last lick, enjoy the shudder that follows and let her pull me to her face. She kisses me – deeply, hungrily – and savors her own juices on my lips. My shaft jumps and I know I can't ignore it any more.

We lie on our sides and our hands start roaming as we kiss with abandon of teenagers. To my surprise, she is far quicker than me: her palm encloses me through the pants and starts caressing. I moan in her mouth as this is almost a torment. A deliciously searing pain I have forgotten since I came into Section – or maybe never even felt before.

She unclasps my pants and pulls them down along with the soaked boxers. For a moment there she just looks at my shaft with a wild smile on her lips as if it were a Christmas present she has been waiting for so long. She reaches for it almost instinctively – but I cannot let her do it. I cannot defile her mouth with this thing that has been everywhere…

I roll on top of her with intent and pin her hands above her head – just like when we started. I rock myself gently along her soft belly – kissing her eyebrows, her cheeks, her mouth. She shudders and arches under me.

'Please…' – she attacks my mouth and I lose it for a moment hovering just above her entrance.

Then the one sensible thought left in my head finally kicks in and I rise on my forearms about to stand up.

'Where are you going?' – Nikita presses me firmly to herself.

I shake my head.

'Protection… In my jacket…' – I look at her trying to erase the memories of all the women I slept with, trying to erase the reason we would need a condom right now.

She entwines her legs around me and takes my face in her hands.

'I want *all* of you' – she says and pierces me with her eyes.

I sigh not really wanting to discuss this topic right now. It would be so much easier if she just agreed… Of course she doesn't know of all the missions when I had to 'perform'…

'Kita… - I whisper. – My past is…'

I can't bring myself to say it. I look away in shame.

'I -don't- care! – her voice is heavy and hurt. – For all I know I could be dead tomorrow!'

I shudder remembering that just this morning I was sure she no longer breathed in this world.

I lean into her and capture her mouth, trying as hard as I can to exorcise this notion from her head – from my head. She can never be dead. She is so much alive, right here, right now… And I want to bring her to a peak of life again and again.

I entwine our fingers above her head and move myself to her entrance. A funny line suddenly jumps into my head, a Shakespeare line I learned for a school play: 'Juliet wills it so!' I close my eyes and succumb to the fire burning in my heart just as the head of my shaft touches her wet – and oh so ready for me! – folds.

I press into her a little – sending a few fireworks into my clouded mind but still patient for her to adjust, more out of habit. Not a lot of women can handle me easily, at least not so suddenly. But she doesn't want to wait, oh she doesn't…

She takes control and arches her hips to me, taking my beating shaft to the base in one long swift movement. I gasp as if she just pushed me off a cliff and frantically gulp for air.

'Don't hold back…' – she whispers and kisses me.

The meaning of this registers in my brain far later than I actually start to move. For I need this just as much as she does, maybe even more.

I let go completely and fall freely, breathing through her, tasting her fine sweat, hearing her frantic heartbeat and beating inside of her to the rhythm of it. Her walls engulf me and draw me deeper each time I thrust, and she cries 'Yes!' and bites my shoulder, my neck – whenever she can reach – and I go on. We are drowning in this – together – we are being drawn to the bottom with relentless speed, and I'm not sure I can breathe or think or do anything. I pray to God I'm not hurting her – not really being able to assess – and I go on. Her mouth is ravishing me, her teeth making their claim and her hips grinding against me. I go on almost wishing it to stop now before I destroy her completely, almost crying. I go on even though everything is twirling around me now, mixing top and bottom, light and dark. I go on letting her hands draw lines on my back, letting her tongue dive into my ear and taunt me there. I go on holding her by the shoulders and suckling her sweet breasts. I go on when her walls start rippling around me and she tenses. I go on as the first fireworks start climbing up my dark soul and burst into flowers. I go on as she calls my name – faster and faster. I go on as she cries out her wild orgasm and convulses under me. I go on until the whole sky is alight and alive with a forgotten childing joy, crackling and erupting and overflowing…

4

It was half past midnight when he came through the door. It was seven a.m. when he left.

In the cold light of morning he was already distant: standing on deck with his back to me, fully clothed and silent. Those six and a half hours we stole from the world already seemed like a fevered dream to me and I couldn't bring myself to touch him.

I stooped to lace my shoe – as if it needed it – to not look at him, to not wish he could stay, to not feel so weak in the knees. But he still managed to take my breath away with an awkward confession.

'I never realized that I needed you so much'.

Never did I, Michael. Oh, never did I…

A cold wind gets under my sweater – to where his hands were just a while ago – and I succumb to the unpleasant shivers, so familiar to me since early childhood. My mom used to leave me in this alley behind the dumpster, while she was 'working', and I huddled in my skimpy clothes dreaming of something warm. I didn't know how to read yet, but one day I found a magazine in the trash, and it had all these beautiful pictures of golden beaches and fluorescent oceans and smiling people. The sun just streamed down on me from those pictures, and the peace I felt when looking at the endless horizon was nothing I could describe with words at that time…

When I finally got out of Section, I made a promise to myself to find this peace, this beautiful paradise. Little did I know how hard it was in the real world without the Section's resources! I had no passport, no money – not as much as decent clothes. There was no Madeline to dress me, no Birkoff to feed me info, no Walter to give me the arms. Of course I could get anything I wanted – by stealing, threatening, lying or even killing. But would this life be any different from Section's?..

So I moved around getting small jobs here and there, laying low, making barely enough to feed myself. This last place – Lyons – at least had a river, and I spent hours looking at sunsets here, listening to the seagulls cry… My heart was shredded to pieces, because the long-awaited freedom turned out to have a taste of mildewed bathrooms, cheap burgers and chilling loneliness.

But last night…

I never realized that I was looking for my paradise in the wrong place. I never realized that my body could be so alive, so singing with emotion.

A hot shudder curls in my stomach as I suddenly remember the singe of his lips on mine. The sheer brutal force of it… breaking all of my resistance and then spreading like wildfire. All of my past was devoured in seconds, the bleak memories of the men I had slept with before Michael – instantly turned to ash.

I thought I knew pleasure. I took a secret pride in 'not doing it like my mom', not trading my body parts for a bit of money or food or stupid delusions. I chose gentle and attentive men who were willing to spend hours caressing me, who showered me with the slightest kisses and patiently cajoled the sweet shudders out of my folds.

How shallow and forced and _physical_ that had been!.. How like a learned dance where one always feared to take a wrong step and the other always kept a certain presence of mind to show the way.

To think that it could be different… So natural and instant and _whole_…

Was it because of his skill, his valentine training? No, not at the risk of my own death could I say _what_ he did to me: what positions, what moves, in what succession… I was mindless with passion and, as far as I could judge, so was he. God, I've never seen him so out of control before! So unstoppable, so savage, so… divine.

Everything that happened after he pinned me to the bed had a will of its own. I couldn't guide it or stop it even if I wanted to – I could only go with it and _hope_ to emerge on the other side alive and intact, same old Nik… Oh, who the hell am I kidding? It will never be the same again. Not after I became the anvil to his passion, not after he melted my bones and reshaped them to his liking, not after my whole body sang with the deep, searing ecstasy I wasn't sure I could stand.

I think I lost consciousness at some point or other, simply let myself fall in the dark bottomless pit of nothing-ness. It was almost a blessing, really, after the months of constant worry and doubt and hollow loneliness. Only later did I realize that this feeling of safety was generated by his arms holding me firmly to himself, encircling my peace like walls of an impenetrable fortress. And as soon as he let go, I began to wake up – only to find myself alone in a tangle of sheets and him standing silently by the porthole.

'Come back to the Section', - he says.

And his look is as naked as his body was then.

It was hard to get used to – his sudden and total openness. His lack of confines and his willingness to touch me. As I was telling my sad tale of never finding the desired freedom and feeling the first cold pangs of regret, his hands kept roaming around my neck and shoulders, purposefully driving away the misgivings. When my voice became heavy with tears and I thought I might break, he drew me closer and simply held in his arms…

It was a couple of minutes before I could register the renewed heat of his body, the hunger with which he breathed me in, the steady pulse of his shaft against my thigh. We still had a couple more hours before the dawn but I knew he wasn't going to persist… He must have thought I was too distressed after confiding in him, so he just stood there ignoring the call of his nature as best as he could.

I let my hand travel down and encircle his need as my mouth captured a tender spot on his neck. His whole body shuddered as he let out a deep breath and then pressed me closer to himself. I felt his heart hammer against the ribcage with a growing speed, but still he didn't move as if unsure of something.

'Michael…' – I called his name softly.

He cupped my face in both of his arms and made me look at him. His gaze burned with unmasked desire but there was also a deep torment as if he was already blaming himself for such… weakness? Trust? Abandon?

I shook my head slightly and whispered:

'Whatever happens…'

I knew this was our only time. We'd part ways in the morning: I'd keep hiding in the gutters, he'd return to Section. But I wanted to get as much of him as possible, to take it with me like a treasure no one would know about.

My words finally broke his dams and he lifted me off the floor. I circled my legs around his torso and let him press me to the wall. I guess he didn't have the patience to bring me to the bed - and neither did I. With one swift stroke he entered me as his nails dug into the soft flesh of my butt.

The world moved on its axis again. I felt my body dissolving with each deep, tantalizingly slow push. The last conscious thought I had was a wondrous surprise at how it could be as _intense_ after we had just exhausted ourselves… At how it never lost its novelty at all…

I don't remember how we got to the bed or how many times I came. It seemed an endless battle in which I kept losing, but was eager to lose over and over… He tried to be gentler and much, much slower and I reveled in teasing him, pushing him closer to the edge with each heated bite at the neck, each smarting cut down his back with my nails. When he finally joined me on the crest of pleasure, I was weightless as a feather, almost non-existing, but beating wildly and bursting with life – that life I sought outside Section…

'I'll bring you in', - he promises.

And I read into that promise probably too much, but my insides are already turning to liquid and a bolt of shivers rushes down my spine. What if doesn't have to be our last time?.. Why should I run away from the only thing that matters?

If he touches me now I'll explode. I won't have the will to tell him no. He probably knows it so he barely even looks in my direction leaving the choice to me.

There is no good-bye kiss, no last glance. I watch him leave, watch his silhouette get smaller as the cold wind flaps at my sweater. Deep inside, my body already aches for him, and I know it will only grow stronger.


End file.
